San Diego  Air traffic control errors — such as allowing planes to fly too close together — rose sharply across the nation in recent years, with the highest increase coming from the San Diego-based hub that manages air traffic for much of Southern California, according to a federal audit released this week.

The increases are “dramatic” and “continue to be a major air safety concern,” concluded the report by the inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Errors soared by 473 percent at the Southern California Terminal Radar Approach Control Facility, which is located in Kearny Mesa. They jumped from 33 in fiscal year 2009 to 189 in fiscal year 2010, the audit showed.

Nationwide, they rose 53 percent — from 1,234 to 1,887 — during the same period, according to the audit. Air traffic hubs in central Florida, Houston and Miami all saw steep increases, though none as high as the San Diego-based center.

The figures remained at the same high level from 2010 through 2011, the latest year for verified data.

The inspector general’s findings became fodder for the nation’s continuing political debate about government spending. While federal aviation officials said the vast majority of mistakes did not lead to significant safety risks, projects to avoid such errors are now in jeopardy due to the forced federal cuts that went into effect last week, a spokesman for an air traffic controller association said Tuesday.

“Safety is air traffic controllers’ top priority. The safety reporting systems … are working well and helping to keep our nation’s aviation system the safest in the world,” Doug Church, spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association said in an email. “Unfortunately, sequestration may soon put that progress at risk. These budget cuts may stymie the efforts of air traffic controllers and the FAA to move safety reporting systems forward with updated technologies and procedures.

Last month, the FAA said worker furloughs and possible shutdowns of air traffic control towers could start by April. On the list of tower shutdowns are San Diego’s Brown Field and airports in Ramona.

The nation’s regional TRACON facilities, as they are called, manage air traffic in the vast space between airports. Southern California TRACON is the nation’s busiest air traffic center, assisting pilots between the more than 60 airports from Ventura County south to Mexico.

The center had 252 staff members in January 2013; 266 in January 2012; 277 in January 2011; and 263 in January 2010, according to figures provided by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Controllers at individual airports, including the San Diego International Airport, manage air traffic when arriving or departing planes are within several miles of the runway.

The audit did not study errors made by controllers at individual airports.

The FAA, which employs controllers at the nation’s regional TRACON hubs, said the rise in errors resulted mostly from increased error reporting, not from an uptick in actual mistakes.

But the inspector general said that reason couldn’t account for the overall skyrocketing of errors found. The audit cited other causes, including a 39 percent rise in errors reported by an automated system “in place for years.”

Another factor was the reclassification of 147 aircraft landings guided by the Kearny Mesa-based TRACON that were later considered too close to other planes, the report added. The recategorization made them “operational errors.”

Kevin Karpe, a manager at the Kearny Mesa-based TRACON, declined to comment on the audit and referred a reporter’s questions to the FAA.

FAA officials say the agency has bolstered its safety mechanisms and that a vast majority of mistakes are breaches of procedure or safety buffers but not near-collisions. Even with the increase in reporting, agency officials said the errors occurred on a tiny fraction of overall air traffic operations.